What We Don't Say at Dinner

The goldfish circled its bowl on the windowsill, orange flashes in the dying light. Marcus watched it instead of watching Elena.

"You're going to turn into a sphinx," she said, pushing spinach around her plate. "All these riddles you won't answer."

He'd spent twenty years building walls around himself, each stone a conversation he'd avoided, each moment of silence another layer of mortar. The baseball game played muted on the television behind them—another season he'd watched without really seeing, another metaphor for their marriage that he refused to acknowledge.

"What do you want me to say?" The words tasted like the spinach he'd forced himself to eat as a child, bitter and impossible to swallow.

"That you're leaving me. That you met someone. That whatever this is—" she gestured at the space between them, at the years of dinners eaten separately, at the bed that had become a geography of unspoken grievances "—has finally collapsed under its own weight."

The goldfish nudged the glass, its mouth opening and closing in silent supplication. He thought of how it would die if someone didn't remember to feed it, how it would float to the surface when it did, how that would be the most honest thing that had happened in this apartment in years.

"I'm not leaving," he said, and the lie felt like ash in his mouth. "There's no one else."

Her laugh was sharp enough to cut. "That's the saddest part, isn't it? You're not leaving for something better. You're just... leaving. You've been gone for months, Marcus. I'm just the only one who hasn't noticed."

He reached for her hand across the table. She didn't pull away, but she didn't close her fingers around his either. Her skin was cool, distant as another country.

"Remember when we used to play baseball in the park?" she asked suddenly. "Before we knew what a marriage actually costs?"

"Elena—"

"I'm tired of riddles," she said. "I'm tired of being the one who always has to solve them. So here's one for you: what has two hearts but only one is still beating?"

He didn't answer. Outside, the last light faded from the sky. The goldfish continued its endless circles, swimming through waters it couldn't name, toward a shore it would never reach.